your hand, holding mine
by thefearlesscherryblossom
Summary: Rose reminisces about her new life without the Doctor. Set after the season Two finale.   Ten and Rose.


Time was falling through, collapsing in on itself. Moments that turned into hours that turned into days without end, had turned into years before she could fully grasp the sense of time passing her by. The emptiness, surrounding her entirely, until she could hardly breathe, but it meant nothing.

She'd taken to marking off the end of each day at sunset on an otherwise blank calendar, because this was the one thing she refused to lose track of. She hid it, along with the remains of her once beating heart, in a locked drawer, because she knew her mother would never stop worrying if she knew that she still woke up every morning with _his_ name on her lips and tears spilling down her cold cheeks. (She'd never cried during the day, not even once.)

And just like empty clockwork, every morning she would rise, go to work, laugh mechanically on cue with the fellow inhabitants of this parallel world that was not hers, her mouth jerking up automatically in strangled smiles, as though lifted on invisible puppet strings. All these spaces where he would never be; but her home was wherever he was. So here she was, left behind without anywhere to return home to, forever wandering. Eternally lost.

She still heard his voice sometimes, calling out her name while she remained alone in the darkness. "Rose…Rose…_.Rose_…"

But that voice never materialized beyond a faint whisper, haunting her, his smile enveloping her every single time she closed her eyes, as though tattooed on the inside of her eyelids for eternity.

Even now, even after so much time had passed, she couldn't let go of the hope that somewhere he was thinking of her too, if only for the briefest moment. For one fraction of a second, her face would flash through his mind, and perhaps he'd be speaking and his words would pause for just that moment. Perhaps his body would suddenly grow still, and he would feel the way every cell in her body screamed out for him, desperate for one glance, one touch, one more moment by his side.

The second hand quietly ticked; she had taken to wearing a watch since he had first crashed into her life. She had only been nineteen, without any sense of what Time really meant or the depth that the present and future and past could fully possess. She glanced down; the sun would set in less than two minutes. Gently, she reached into the drawer, pulling out the calendar, the binding slowly fraying as everything continued to age.

The evening air was chilly; autumn had descended with frosty breezes and a lingering scent of woody smoke in the air. She walked down the pier, to the edge of the water; the house that she lived in was right beside the ocean. He'd once casually mentioned that if he could ever get the chance to settle down, he would live by the sea. (_All that should have been…) _

Though she had all the time in the world now, there was never enough Time for should have or could have or would have been- just what was. She looked down at her watch again; _seven, six, five…_

Her eyes focused on the last rays of the sun, fading over the endless waves.

_Four, three, two, one_.

And the faint light in her eyes was extinguished again, as always, as she carefully marked off yet another day.

"You know, Doctor," her voice cracked slightly, as she sunk down to her feet, sitting on the cold sand, wrapping her arms around herself. "You would be proud- I've learned to keep track of Time so carefully. Now I truly know the meaning of every minute, and every second in between…"

As always, the silence answered her, and she smiled brokenly as the first stars of the evening began to glimmer in the sky.

She'd traveled through countless galaxies and dimensions with him, to all sorts of different planets further than the deepest reaches of her imagination- and she had yet to see a star that shined more brilliantly than he had, his hand grasping hers so tightly, the one time she'd felt completely whole in her life.

Somehow, she felt certain that she never would.


End file.
